In its simplest form, CCC will clone one hard drive to another, copying every single block or file to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. This is very useful if, for example, your laptop is damaged and you must send it in for repair.

CCC can also be used to perform regular backups of your data. When you select a source disk in CCC, you are presented with the contents of that disk (hidden items too). Simply uncheck the items that you do not want to backup, and CCC will provide ample indication what will and will not be copied. Select a target disk to which you would like to backup, then press the clone button.

The key to a successful backup plan is to actually do the backups regularly. When left to a human, the task often gets tacked on to the end of a very long list of other things to do. When you eventually have a catastrophe, the data is simply gone. You know that feeling -- you just lost six years of family photos. Your kids being born, their first birthdays, their first everything. The answer to this is consistent and regular backups, placed on a schedule and handled automatically by your computer. CCC includes that functionality, and takes it even further.

Version 3.4.5:

Fixed a minor timing issue that would prevent CCC from finishing the submission of an email notification when a scheduled task was configured to sleep or shut down the Mac.

Fixed an issue in which non-ASCII characters would be improperly displayed during the backup task (this was only a cosmetic problem).

Fixed an issue in which CCC would occasionally not retain the user's last choice in the preset configurations menu.

Growl notifications should be a bit more consistent on Lion.

In anticipation of Mountain Lion's requirement that I use Apple's code signing certificate to sign my application, this version of CCC will migrate entries in the CCC private keychain to a new keychain. I have leveraged codesigning in CCC for almost 5 years and recently started to rely on it to have access to keychain entries without annoying the end user for permission to do so. Switching code signing certificates at this point invalidates the keychain item access control lists that I previously applied, forcing me to migrate the keychain or face losing access to those keychain items. When you launch this new version of CCC, you'll see a progress panel that indicates that CCC is migrating the keychain. This should be fast and eventless. If you see a dialog from the system asking you to grant CCC access to a keychain item, however, it is imperative that you click on "Allow" to give CCC access to those keychain items.

In earlier versions of CCC, when an encrypted disk image's passphrase keychain entry was updated by the scheduled task helper application, access to that keychain item would be limited to only the scheduled task helper application. Subsequent ad hoc attempts to back up to the encrypted disk image (e.g. in CCC's main window) would result in a request to grant CCC access to the keychain item. This update fixes that access limitation.

Fixed a bug in which CCC would not properly set the modification date on files copied to SMB shares hosted by some versions of Windows. This would result in CCC wanting to recopy every file to the destination on subsequent backups.

Reverted to the pre-3.4.4 behavior of automatically running a scheduled task upon wake if the task missed a scheduled run time during sleep. If you would prefer that CCC automatically skip tasks missed during sleep, drop me a line on the Help Desk, there is a hidden setting that will accommodate this preference.

In previous versions, CCC might report that a source or destination folder on a network volume does not exist, when it plainly does. CCC now appropriately handles the permissions limitation that led to this errant message.

Fixed an issue in which extended attributes may be recopied to some non-HFS destinations every time a backup task runs.

Fixed a couple issues that could result in a crash.

Fixed an issue in which CCC would hang on launch if there is a corrupted scheduled task configuration file present. Now that corruption is detected and these files are removed.

Fixed an issue in which the "Reschedule all future events for this time of day" setting did not work for tasks configured to run weekly or monthly.

Fixed an issue in which weekly and monthly tasks scheduled with a start date prior to the Daylight Saving Time switch and a start time within the "lost hour" would run multiple times a day.

Scheduled tasks can now mount the underlying network volume for a source volume that is a disk image

Fixed an anomaly with progress indication in which the progress indicator would jump wildly if the user ran a task with exclusions, then another task without exclusions.

Scheduled tasks will now reschedule themselves when the system time zone is changed. If a task was scheduled for 2PM Eastern time and you change the time zone to Pacific time, the task should run at 2PM Pacific time. This functionality is only partially available to Tiger users. Tiger doesn't offer "time zone changed" notifications, so the currently-scheduled task will only be rescheduled upon wake, or when the task is reloaded.

Some of the postflight cleanup tasks that are required for making a clone of Mac OS X bootable were getting skipped when minor transfer errors occurred. These tasks will now run regardless of minor transfer errors, so the destination volume should be bootable even when minor errors occur (assuming there aren't any other hardware compatibility problems).